A World of Republics: Spanish American Republics in the Atlantean Context
A Review of Sabato’s Republics of the New World (2018)
Hilda Sabato, Republics of the New World: The Revolutionary Political Experiment in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018).
Since the organization of the Atlantic World school as a way to examine world history over forty years ago, countless scholars have worked to integrate their historical subjects into the broader web of the Atlantic world. Moving from national and local centric histories, the new wave of scholarship shows the flow of goods, ideas, and people across the Atlantic Basin. Atlantic world scholars note and debate how this flow created new cultures, transformed regions, and led to the growth of the modern world. Frequently, particularly in the first decade of scholarship, Atlantic World narratives lacked any meaningful connection to the Iberian (Spain/Portugal) empires, which encompassed the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America. Many scholars have since corrected this error, integrating these empires as meaningful contributors to the development of the Atlantic world. Hilda Sábato, a professor of history at the University of Buenos Aires, adds to this intervention by exploring the role of popular sovereignty and republicanism in the Spanish Americas from 1808 through the 1870s in her synthesis work Republics of the New World (2018).
Sábato’s work draws from decades of scholarship that have reframed how scholars approach the development of Latin American governments in the nineteenth century. This scholarship has moved beyond the “caudillo thesis” which argued that following the independence of Latin America the most common form of government was a strong man dominated government (the frequently cited example being the Mexican government under Antonio López de Santa Anna) which resulted in constant chaos and near anarchy in the region. Sábato, as well as the scholars that she summarizes, vehemently disagree with this interpretation, instead suggesting that Latin American republics were no different from other Atlantic world experiments with republicanism. Importantly she frames the era as one of numerous governmental experiments, with different forms of republicanism being tried by states across the Atlantic world. While causing instability, these experimentations prioritized shifting the source of power towards the “the people” and away from the rule of divine monarchs.
In explaining how Latin American nation states were indeed contributors to the era of republican experimentation (she does not include the Caribbean in this analysis), Sábato looks for common unifying elements that are illustrative of a general Latin American trend. She builds her narrative on four key themes of shifting views of sovereignty, the role of elections, civic militarism, and the role of public opinion. Organized into four chapters, with an introduction, closing essay, and epilogue, Sábato’s narrative embraces a geographical framework from Mexico to Chile and includes both Spanish and Portuguese possessions. Republics of the New World is a meta-narrative that intentionally downplays differences (something Sábato notes in the introduction) in order to show commonalities among the various states of Central and South America. Primarily a historian of Argentina, Sábato argues that trends of Argentina can be generalized across the former possessions of the Iberian empires.
In her second chapter, Sábato explores the first theme of shifting views of sovereignty, She highlights how the Napoleonic Wars and the fall of the Spanish royal government led to a chain reaction in the stability of the Spanish empire that ultimately shifted how Spanish Americans viewed sovereignty. Sábato does well at interconnecting Latin American experience to the broader trends of the Atlantic world. Rather than isolated incidents, the experiences of Spanish Americans fit within a broader world of revolution, counter revolution, and warfare. She urges scholars to see how ideas of an older monarchical divinely appointed contract, one in which the monarch stood as the unifying link between separate peoples, was deeply challenged by the collapse of the monarchy across Latin America. She notes that while other parts of the Atlantic world embraced constitutional monarchy in response to the chaos of the Napoleonic Era, Latin Americans widely moved towards creating various types of republican states. She notes that these states were diverse and reflected how Spanish Americans engaged with the “liberal” ideologies of the Atlantic world, as well as with their own experiences with colonialism.
Sábato follows in her third chapter by looking at elections as a unifying theme among Latin American states. She notes that elections have been underestimated and overlooked by previous generations of scholars, thus feeding the caudillo thesis and the idea that Latin American politics can be seen as one of chaos and anarchy. Sábato sees innovation and experimentation in the shifting governments of Latin America. Wide political suffrage, with a rather open process of accessing voting rights through military service, created a significant electoral body. She is emphatic that elections demonstrated strong engagement by the peoples of various states with the electoral systems of the regions and localities and that leaders depended on electoral popularity for success.
Her third theme of the right to bear arms connects older traditions of militia service in the Spanish Empire with larger themes of military service as core to citizenship that were then circulating the Atlantic world. Latin Americans vehemently debated the role of standing armies in ways that echo debates in Great Britain and the United States. They lionized the citizen soldier who fought for home and country while rejecting the abuses of dictators and tyrants. Sábato explicitly engages with the idea that Latin American states were more prone to upheaval and violence by suggesting that these trends were similar to the United States and Revolutionary France. She argues that Latin American violence should instead be seen as part of a larger revolutionary tradition of resistance to government through force. In this framework caudillos had to earn the respect of the people and gain their support in order to gain power. Commanders, including those who have been framed as “caudillos,” came out of local political structures and were deeply invested in the political workings of their nation. Rather than dictatorial, the strong men of Latin America can be seen as strong leaders, perhaps even comparable to Abraham Lincoln. (See Chapter 3, eBook) This reworking of the caudillo thesis does not ignore militarism, but rather sees it as part of a broader Atlantic world pattern that was common to all republican experiments of the nineteenth century.
Her final theme of the role of public opinion demonstrates how Latin American republics were built on the Enlightenment era conception that public opinion mattered in how a government should act. She notes that both elite level institutions (lodges, secret societies, etc.) and lower sort groups (such as voluntary associations) helped promote a world of information and shared opinions. The rise of the press in Latin America was essential to the creation of a public sphere and also was constantly attempted to be restricted by republican governments. This section, while built on numerous scholars, lacked some of the larger Atlantic world connections that were clearly woven in previous chapters.
Sábato creates a broad ranging and sweeping survey of politics and the rise of Latin American republics. While there is much that is helpful and useful, there are some weaknesses to her arguments. I found her lack of engagement with the role of violence as a destabilizing influence less than satisfying. She is right to point to the Civil War as an event of destabilization, however, her work deemphasizes the issues that constant societal discord and violence can have on social trust and community integration. The aftershocks of the American Civil War lasted for generations, leading me to wonder what effects occurred in some nations due to frequent upheavals in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, I was perplexed by her section on elections. She argues that these elections were influential and “were a decisive moment in the political life of Spanish America.” However, earlier in the chapter, she notes that in most Latin American republics the electorate composed “often around 2 percent” of the total population and that “among those qualified to vote, the turnout was usually below 50 percent of the potential voters.” If the elections were participated in by such a small minority of the populace “for most of the century,” how is it possible for these elections to be the decisive moment of political life? The low turnout further raises questions about the republican enthusiasm and popular support for the government. Engaging with this data would have tremendously helped the larger argument of the importance of elections. Finally, I find meta-narratives often gloss over much of history and the unique lived experiences of people, however this is more of a personal preference.
Overall, Sábato’s work does what a major synthesis should do. She connects and integrates different scholarship into a cohesive narrative and provides a meta-arch that can be used by both undergraduates and graduate students. However, as with many synthesis works, there are areas that are missed and the scholarly debates smoothed over to present a more simple consensus. Sábato is a good writer and provides a clear coherent narrative that shows the importance of placing the Latin American republics within the context of a broader Atlantic world and the fate of republicanism in the Atlantic world.
Robert Swanson